The Apprentice 2010, BBC One, episode one review: a new nitwit emerges

As The Apprentice returns to BBC One, Andrew Pettie reviews the opening
episode in which viewers were introduced to Lord Sugar's new aide Karren
Brady and a fresh batch of candidates, including Stuart Baggs "The Brand".

Jamie Lester and Stuart Baggs clash during
their task in the first episode of the 2010 run of the BBC's reality
recruitment series The Apprentice.Photo: BBC

Meet Stuart Baggs, a 21-year-old telecoms entrepreneur who last night became
the youngest candidate ever to appear on The
Apprentice (BBC One). On paper he sounds rather impressive. Stuart’s
business career started on the playground, where he sold yo-yos to
classmates. Then, barely in long trousers, he launched his own
telecommunications company at the age of 18. Even his hobbies conform to the
stereotype of the thrusting young executive: when he’s not pushing
envelopes, actioning tasks and taking the helicopter view, Stuart likes to
go rock-climbing, abseiling and powerboat racing. And, in the nauseating
phrase of one of last year’s candidates, he would appear to possess the full
“rainbow of skills” required to succeed in business.

However, as Lord Sugar knows to his cost, CVs can be misleading. (“I’ve read
all your CVs,” thundered the peeved peer in his boardroom, “and on paper you
all look very good. But then again, so do fish and chips.”) And, sure
enough, the moment Stuart found himself within bragging distance of a TV
camera, a torrent of self-aggrandising guff poured forth with the kind of
speed and fluency that hasn’t been witnessed on The Apprentice viewers since
the glory days of Raef Bjayou in series four.

As usual, the 16 candidates had been set an apparently simple task: to make
and sell sausages. The girls’ team did quite well. Their pricing strategy
added up, they showed flashes of competence and their expensive gourmet
sausages looked appetising and, more to the point, like sausages. None of
this could be said of the boys’ efforts.

Determined to make the cheapest, ghastliest tubes of meat possible, the boys
refused to waste any time planning the task and got straight down to the
urgent business of bellowing insults at one another. Team captain Dan
Harris, a sales director who once played a soldier in Steven Spielberg’s
Saving Private Ryan, appeared to believe that he was once again at war.

“Who is doing the MINCING?!” roared Dan like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, as
one of his team scuttled past with a bucket of gristle. “Who the ---- is it?
Step up!” Unfortunately for Dan no one did. And, needless to say, he was too
busy screaming obscenities to do anything useful. There are clearly two
things that Dan Harris will never mince: i)his words, ii) mince. His
browbeaten underlings, on the other hand, were too busy sharpening their
butcher’s knives in preparation for the inevitable boardroom showdown to
come.

But before one of them was fired, the boys had a van-load of disgusting
sausages to sell. An expert salesman was required. Someone with the charm of
a Michelin-starred maître d’ and the killer instincts of a great white
shark. Luckily Stuart Baggs knew just such a man. In fact, he had alerted
viewers to this extraordinary individual earlier in the show. “I’m Stuart
Baggs: the brand,” he had said by way of introduction, “and whatever I touch
turns to sold.” In truth, Stuart did flog a few dozen sausages to bewildered
passers-by. When anyone politely declined, however, this consummate selling
machine resorted to plan B: verbally abusing them. Dan, meanwhile, adopted
the more imaginative (though even less successful) strategy of trying to
sell his sausages wholesale to a florist.

With the girls making a slightly bigger profit, the boardroom line-up was as
follows: Dan the Mouth, Stuart the Brand and Alex the Unemployed
Communications Executive who, incidentally, “credits himself with inventing
the bendy bus”. (Though just to be clear, he didn’t.)

In recent series, candidates have become fractionally more self-aware in the
boardroom, knowing what to say to curry favour or earn a reprieve.
Refreshingly, this trio went straight for the jugular and almost had to be
physically restrained before Lord Sugar did the necessary and fired Dan.

I’m just grateful that Stuart was spared. He may not deserve a £100,000-a-year
job but anyone capable of uttering the following sentence should be awarded
some kind of prize: “I’m alive. There are so many people that aren’t alive
or have died, unfortunately. I’m alive, and that’s a gift, frankly. I wake
up every morning, once I’ve had the sleep I need, and I go out and make
money.” Or rancid sausages.

The Apprentice may look and feel just the same as it did in 2005, when
it began, but the show’s trump card remains its ability to unearth
gloriously self-delusional nincompoops. I feel sure that in the weeks to
come Stuart Baggs the Brand will join Lord Sugar’s pantheon of corporate
clowns alongside Paul Tulip, Tre Azam and dear old Raef.

Britain may be in the grip of recession, but in the field of blithering idiocy
we remain market leaders.

The Apprentice may look and feel just the same as it did in 2005, when
it began, but the show’s trump card remains its ability to unearth
gloriously self-delusional nincompoops. I feel sure that in the weeks to
come Stuart Baggs the Brand will join Lord Sugar’s pantheon of corporate
clowns alongside Paul Tulip, Tre Azam and dear old Raef.

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